AVROTROS – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2024)

The controller is a Dutch radio and television broadcaster. On its website it offers a forum called “Radar”, where people who had signed up can post articles and reply to other people’s posts. The users must comply with some conditions of use, called “Huisregels” (House rules). Compliance with those rules is monitored by the moderators of the forum. The data subject has been participating in the forum since 2006. After being banned for the violation of the house rules, the data subject filed an access request. The controller did not act on this request. Therefore, the data subject sued the controller before the District Court Midden-Nederland (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland), asking the court to order the controller to comply with the access request and provide him a copy of his information relating to the violation of the house rules. The controller argued it was not obliged to act on the access request since the so called “journalistic exception” applied: Article 85 GDPR provides that Member States shall reconcile by law the right to protection of personal data with the right to freedom of expression and information, including the processing for journalistic purposes. To this purpose, [https://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0040940&hoofdstuk=4&artikel=43&z=2018-05-25&g=2018-05-25 Article 43 of the GDPR Implementation Act] (Uitvoeringswet Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming – UAVG) foresees that Article 15 GDPR shall not apply to the processing of personal data exclusively for journalistic purposes. On 4 January 2023, the court stated that the controller could not rely on the so called “journalistic exception”. Moreover, it ruled that the controller had already sufficiently given the data subject access to his personal data, but ordered it to provide him with the information as described in Article 15(1)(a) to 15(1)(h) GDPR. Both the data subject and the controller appealed the decision before the Court of Appeal of Arnhem-Leeuwarden (Gerechtshof Arnhem-Leeuward